I
recently read something on Sholem Aleichem
and it reminded me of the time I attended
one of his one-act plays at the King David
Hotel in Jerusalem. It was a great play at a
grand venue that I'll never forget. But
then, Sholem Aleichem is still a star in
Israel although he's been dead since 1916.
His folksy way of writing has given rise to
his being called the Jewish Mark Twain. He
considered himself a common man writing for
common people and always kept his dialogue
simple. His style and name became more
widely known to the non-Yiddish world only
with the production of "Fiddler on the
Roof."

Sholem Aleichem lived in the
Bronx

Solomon
Naumovich Rabinovich was born in on May 16,
1859 in a small Ukranian town and lived
through an era when pogroms still ravaged
Eastern Europe. He had always wanted to
express himself in writing and began his
career as a published writer at about the
age of 20. He escaped from a pogrom in 1905
and fled to America where some of his plays
flopped but where his story-telling became
legendary. He wrote mainly in Yiddish but
also in Hebrew and Russian. He took the pen
name Sholem Aleichem when he married in
1883. It was meant to keep his identity a
secret, especially from his father, as
Yiddish writers were generally looked down
upon by Jews with superior educations who
generally wrote in Hebrew.

"Motl,
the Cantor's Son" is one of his more popular
serialized novels. Written in English for
the New York World newspaper while he was
living in New York, the book tells the story
of an eight year old boy rejoicing at
shedding his Eastern European culture and
coming to a new life in America. The book is
still widely available and inexpensive as it
was reprinted by Penguin Classics under the
title "Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the
Cantor's Son." The book will give you an
idea his of Mark Twain-like approach to
story telling.

He is also the subject of the documentary
film "Laughing in the Darkness." Directed by
Joseph Dorman, the film also showcases the
lives of European Jews transitioning to a
new life. The title is well-chosen as Sholem
Aleichem did say: To make people laugh is
almost a sickness with me. Not only was he a
wit, he was an intellectual wit, a side of
his persona not often displayed in his
writings.

Sholem Aleichem moved to the Bronx on his
second trip to America. He lived at 968
Kelly Street near the Intervale Avenue IRT
station of the White Plains Road #2 line
which opened in 1904. He did quite a bit of
writing at that location and passed away
from tuberculosis there on May 13, 1916 when
only 57 years old. There are varying figures
as to how many people lined the streets for
his funeral cortege. The New York Times
reported in excess of 100,000 people and
another paper put the number at 150,000.
Either seems quite impressive to me. The
cortege traveled through Harlem stopping at
a synagogue where a noted cantor chanted
over his casket before it proceeded to the
Lower East Side where many of his most
ardent readers resided. From there it
continued to Brooklyn for his burial. And a
great many people cried.